Tag Archives: Cornel West

Former Congressman Tom Tancredo sounds the warning on his blog that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement not only is a hard left-wing movement, it has turned violent and therfore has become a “homeland security issue”.

As proof of OWS’s hard left character, let’s look at who its supporters are, beginning with the regime in North Korea, the last redoubt of diehard communism in the world today.

On October 18, 2011, the government of psychopath “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il released a statement praising OWS for facilitating “the working masses’ struggle against capitalism”:

“The Occupy Wall St[reet] movement was an eruption of the exploited classes’ pent-up wrath at the exploiters. It was also an expression of the will to remove the stronghold of capitalism as a whole which brings only exploitation, oppression, unemployment and poverty to the popular masses … [in a] corrupt society where the rich get ever richer and the poor get ever poorer.”

North Korea and the groups above would have us believe that OWS is a struggle by “the working masses” and the “exploited classes.” You mean such as the “exploited” “working class” individuals below? (Most of the following names are from Discover the Networks; some are from my post “Who Are the Top 1%?“. Most of the estimated net worth figures are from Celebrity Net Worth):

Wade Rathke, ACORN founder (In June 2008, Wade stepped down as ACORN’s chief organizer when his brother, Dale, was found to have embezzled $948,607.50 from ACORN and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999-2000. Wade Rathke, however, remains chief organizer for Acorn International L.L.C.)

Jim Wallis, Progressive “social justice” preacher whose organization Sojourners had a total revenue of $4.6 million in 2008 and is partly funded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School (Obama’s alma mater!) professor; former Obama adviser on TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program); currently running as a Democrat in Massachusetts’ U.S. Senate race (against Scott Brown); claims to have created “much of the intellectual foundation” for the OWS movement. In 1996, Warren had the 3rd highest salary at Harvard Law, at $181,300. She lives in a $1.7 million home in Cambridge, MA.

Cornel West, Princeton University Marxist professor (West makes a 6-figure salary and also gets paid 6-figures for his speaking engagements).

Kanye West, hip-hop singer (net worth $70 million).

These individuals are no more “working class” folk than I am. Unlike me, however, most of the people above have net worths that make them members of the “top 1%” — the supposed target of the Occupy Wall Street movement. And yet, they vocally support the “we are the 99%” OWS movement.

Smelling blood, the political sharks are beginning to circle Obama, readying themselves for the kill.

Increasingly disenchanted with The Anointed Repulsive One, the Left are signalling they will no longer stick by him.

David Weprin, the Democrat loser in the special election to replace disgraced Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner (NY), is blaming Obama for his loss in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1. Weprin told the New York Post: “I think that voters looked at it as a referendum on the president.”

The Washington Timesreports this morning that a group of liberal leaders, including former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, announced plans to challenge Obama in primaries next year.

In search of candidates, Nader and the others have sent out a letter, endorsed by 45 “distinguished leaders,”to elected officials, civic leaders, academics and members of the progressive community who specialize among other things in labor, poverty, military and foreign policy. The list also includes “progressive Democrats” who have held national and state office and have fought for “progressive” reforms.

Black Princeton University professor, Cornel West, has been highly critical of Obama’s tenure since helping him get elected in 2008: “We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people. His administration has tilted too much toward Wall Street, we need policies that empower Main Street.”

Nader and West are joined by Christ Townsend, of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, and Brent Blackwelder, president emeritus of Friends of the Earth.

Yesterday, Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune — Obama’s home city — even called on Skippy to withdraw! Chapman wrote:

“When Ronald Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, his slogan was “Morning in America.” For Barack Obama, it’s more like midnight in a coal mine. […] The vultures are starting to circle. Former White House spokesman Bill Burton said that unless Obama can rally the Democratic base, which is disillusioned with him, ‘it’s going to be impossible for the president to win.’ Democratic consultant James Carville had one word of advice for Obama: ‘Panic.’

But there is good news for the president. I checked the Constitution, and he is under no compulsion to run for re-election. He can scrap the campaign, bag the fundraising calls and never watch another Republican debate as long as he’s willing to vacate the premises by Jan. 20, 2013. That might be the sensible thing to do….”

As Bette Davis (as Margo Channing) said in All About Eve (1950): “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

A black man kneels in worship of Obama as he leaves a restaurant in Chicago, Oct. 31, 2010

On July 10, 2011, using an AP story, the Chicago Sun Times‘ Jesse Washington reports the bleak news that the continuing recession “has knocked” many in the Black community “out of the middle class and back into poverty,” and that “some experts warn of a historic reversal of hard-won economic gains that took black people decades to achieve.” Maya Wiley, director of the Center for Social Inclusion, predicted that “History is going to say the black middle class was decimated” over the past few years.

There is no specific definition for “‘Middle Class” according to the U.S. Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, a reasonable definition would be “median income” — that income that divides a society’s income distribution into two equal groups, half with incomes above the median and half with incomes below the median.

According to “The African American Middle Class,” BlackDemographics.com, in 2009, the median household income for all US households was $49,777. Some 43% of U.S. households could be considered middle class, with an annual income of $35,000 to $100,000. As a group, American Blacks tend to be poorer, which accounts for why the median Black household income in 2009 was $32,584.

Since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, America’s black middle class had grown tremendously. African Americans have moved into more white collar jobs and are more educated than ever before. No longer isolated and identified by skin tone they integrated into white middle class neighborhoods and developed their own black middle class neighborhoods. By the 1990s middle class Black America was well established as a separate community and was no longer forced to live with lower income Blacks.

But those gains are now at risk of being reversed. Here are the indicators and reasons for the disappearing Black middle class [Source: Chicago Sun Times]. The diminishing Black middle class, in turn, carries troubling implications for American democracy.

The Recession Has Hit Blacks Harder

From 2007 to 2009, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4% to 9.1%, but the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7% to 16.2%. The latest numbers (July 8, 2011) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics have the national unemployment rate at 9.2%, with Blacks having the highest jobless rate (16.2%), followed by Hispanics (11.6%), Whites (8.1%), and Asians (6.8%).

Even college-educated Blacks fared worse than their white counterparts in the recession. In 2009, unemployment for college-educated Whites was 3.9%; for college-educated Blacks it was 7%.

Nearly 8% of Blacks who bought homes from 2005 to 2008 have lost them to foreclosure, compared with 4.5% of Whites, according to an estimate by the Center for Responsible Lending.

The Racial Gap in Net worth

But the racial gap goes beyond household income, employment, and home foreclosures. In part because of black Americans’ broken family structure and absent fathers, Blacks have a lower net worth, which means that they spend instead of save what they make. Their lower net worth, in turn, means Blacks are poorer as a group.

An analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the net worth of Blacks is falling at a greater rate than that of Whites. In 2004, the median net worth of White households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for Black households. By 2009, the median net worth for White households had fallen 24% to $97,860; the median net worth for Black households had fallen 83% to $2,170. Translated, this means that in 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents.

The outlook for the future may be even bleaker.

Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, thinks more Blacks than ever before could fall out of the middle class because Blacks are overrepresented in state and local government jobs. Those are jobs that are being eliminated because of massive budget shortfalls.

Some see a bitter irony in soaring black unemployment and the decline of the black middle class on the watch of the first black president. “I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone,” Princeton Professor Cornel West told truthdig.com recently. West said Obama sold out the poor to become “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. . . . I don’t think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama.”